Shrounda Selivanoff is the Director of Public Policy at Children’s Home Society of Washington. She brings a fierce and passionate voice advocating for systemic change for parents and their children involved with the child welfare system. She was previously involved with the system due to a severe drug and alcohol addiction. Through life challenges, she has persevered. At present, she continues to learn more about the child welfare system from a kinship caregiver’s perspective to her grandson.

Shrounda’s child welfare experience birthed an advocate seeking to destigmatize parents and move toward a system that empowers and values parents as partners. Shrounda’s work prioritizes marginalized and disenfranchised families and relentlessly pursues policy change and system reform toward preserving and strengthening families. She has a keen understanding of change agents’ power, the impacts and barriers of policies, and the overall importance of personal and societal transformation.

Shrounda has extensive work experience with the King County Parents for Parents Program, Washington State Office Public Defense’s Parent Representation Program, and other programs such as the Perinatal Treatment Services and the University of Washington Fetal Alcohol Drug Unit Parent-Child Assistance Program.

Shrounda is the recipient of the 2021 Casey Excellence for Child Award and the 2021 Unsung Hero Award by the Department of Children, Youth, and Family Strengthening Families in partnership with Seattle Child. She is also a member of the Washington State Parent Ally Committee, a founding member of the Birth Parent National Network, Executive Board member of Family Treatment Court of King County, the Co-Chair of the Department of Children, Youth and Families Oversight Board, a national consultant for Casey Families and the Children’s Trust Fund serving multiple jurisdictions across the United States. She provides a parent lived experience on the state, local and national platforms, all in pursuit of justice and family preservation.

Ashley Albert serves as an activist and advocate as a person with lived experience (PLE) in many platforms around system change She is an advisor for the Evidence Based Practice Institute’s Jaspr application, which assists with crisis planning and provides evidence-based post-discharge support for emergency room patients at risk of suicide; a case manager for homeless youth; a mentor to young adults and parents in her community; a certified peer counselor with the state of Washington; and a mental health practitioner offering wraparound services to youth and families as a parent partner. She has a wealth of experience in social work and has served disenfranchised communities from all walks of life. Ashley is passionate about helping others in need, and is especially passionate about instilling the tools needed to grow strong relationships in families surviving trauma. She has served as a leader in advocacy for parents entangled in the family regulation system, and has spent years educating and advocating on behalf of parents through legal systems, parent programs, and advocacy committees.. Ashley is a member of the steering committee for the Repeal ASFA campaign; a board member of the Pacific Northwest Alternative Peer Group, which offers holistic wraparound services for youth in recovery and their families; and a member of the Birth Parent National Network (BPNN). She is the former Parent Engagement Coordinator for the Washington State Parents 4 Parents program and has served as a facilitator for the Washington State parent advocacy committee. She is currently enrolled at the Parent Leadership Training Institute through the Washington State Family and Community Engagement Trust at Everett Community College.

Ashley grew up in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle, WA. As a youth she was involved in the foster care, mental health, and juvenile criminal systems. She is a formerly incarcerated woman and a parent affected by the family regulation system who shares her experiences to help others achieve freedom. . In and out of different systems, Ashley was made to feel inadequate and different as a youth, which led to her challenges as a young African-American woman in society. Ashley successfully reunified with her oldest son after his time in foster care and is the first parent to successfully enforce and modify an open adoption agreement in Washington State. Most importantly, she is a woman of color who speaks up on behalf of those who are now navigating the same systems and experiencing the same injustices she herself experienced and was able to overcome. 

Ashley is a mother, sister, and friend to many, and  a contributor and loving spirit to all that meet her. Ashleylives in Burien, WA with her oldest child, Wayne. She loves God, her family, and her community. Most importantly, through pain and trauma, she has learned to enjoy loving herself.

Ericka Brewington was born and raised in Harlem, and is an activist working to abolish the existing family regulation system. She is a mother to four beautiful children. She has been an advocate in various fields, including home healthcare and legal firms.

Galileo Savage is an undergraduate student at Binghamton University, Class of 2024. He is an aspiring lawyer who currently majors in Political Science with a concentration in global and international affairs. Galileo has taken on many intentional student leadership roles with hopes of bringing awareness to systemic issues plaguing his home and school community. He is working to achieve equity and equality to obtain best outcomes for his community. He currently holds the Juvenile Justice position for his universities NAACP organization with hope to aid youth who are unjustly trialed and convicted, A Peer Mentor for Binghamton University, A President of his universities College Council, all while being Binghamton Universities first ever EOP student ambassador. Galileo is a foster care survivor and spent the summer of 2021 interning with JMacForFamilies, an organization he has come to love because the work aims to help and empower families in their quest towards remaining intact and/or supporting reunification without delay.

Zoe Russell

Zoe Russell (she/her) is a third year student at Harvard Law School. Her passion is supporting radical change for poor Black and Brown families is her passion, and the abolition of the family regulation system is her goal. She is a deep believer in investing in community, and being held accountable by community. She strives to use her role as legal advocate to expand community capacity and develop transformative methods of care and restoration outside of legal, carceral, and capitalist systems.

Throughout law school, Zoe has focused on child and family advocacy through meaningful work experiences. During her summers she interned with the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative to uplift student voices in educational decision making, and Neighborhood Defender Service representing parents accused of abuse and neglect in Manhattan. She is the co-director of the Family Practice at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and represents low-income families in divorce, custody, and child support proceedings in Greater Boston Family Court. Zoe is also a founding member of The Bell Collective for Critical Race Theory, the only organization at Harvard Law that dedicates space for discussions of critical race theory as an essential lens acknowledging the law as a racist, white-supremacist structure. She is an organizer of the annual Critical Race Theory Conference at Harvard Law, which invites attendees to reimagine lawyering, and build social movements that dismantle, rather than reform, systems of oppression.

Dr. John Robertson teaches Social Welfare Policy, the Policy Practice course for policy majors, and Advocacy in Social Work Practice. His interests include community development and organization, employment and family issues, and treatment for people struggling with substance abuse. He is involved in community social work practice in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood and has worked on several national policy research initiatives related to poor families, their employment, family formation, and receipt of public assistance. His publications include “Social Work with Families after PRWORA: Family Systems and Rational Choice Models,” “Relational Discord and Depressive Symptomatology among Non-Marital Co-Parents,” “Using Geographical Information Systems to Enhance Community-Based Child Welfare Services,” “Young Nonresidential Fathers Have Lower Earnings: Implications for Increasing Child Support Payments,” and “Using the Criminal Justice System to Prevent Adolescent Drug Abuse.”

Dr. Robertson has taught research methodology and human behavior courses. He previously taught at the Hunter School of Social Work, where he developed the school’s community organization field placement program, and at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. He has also worked with newly released federal inmates as they return to family, employment, and their communities. Dr. Robertson holds a BA in Economics from St. John’s College, University of Manitoba; an MSW from Rutgers University; and a PhD in Labor Economics and Social Policy from the Columbia School of Social Work.